A wide variety of optical sights are currently available for use on firearms such as handguns or pistols. A typical pistol has optical alignment fixtures or sights that include a front sight and a rear sight. These two sights can be aligned with one another to form a sight picture for aligning the pistol's point of aim on a target. Prior art pistol sights are usually mounted along the top edge of the pistol. Traditional semi-automatic pistols, such as, for example, the well known Colt™ model 1911, caliber .45, include a grip or handle carrying a lower receiver, a trigger mechanism and a slide member which is slidably supported on the lower receiver.
The traditional front sight is a vertically projecting blade or ramp-like member that is mounted at the front of the slide. The rear sight is adapted for mounting to the rear of the slide using a dovetailed transverse protrusion that mates with a corresponding transverse dovetailed slot in the slide.
Police officers and members of the armed forces require especially rugged sights on their weapons and so a genre of firearms and accessories adapted for “combat carry” has evolved to serve their special needs. These firearms must be durable, dependable and easy to operate. One requirement of such “combat carry” types of firearms is that the sights which they utilize not present a snagging hazard. It is clearly imperative that the pistol user must be able to unholster or to otherwise remove his pistol from its carry position and to place it in its use position without the possibility of the sight mechanism becoming caught on, or snagging a portion of the holster, an article of the user's clothing or a strap or other component of an article of equipment that he may be carrying. Even a momentary delay in the smooth transition of the pistol from a carry position to a use position can have fatal consequences.
The assignee of the present application previously developed a fixed sight which is intended to provide a smooth and snag-free draw, a clear sight picture and rugged service. That fixed sight is shown in Design Patent D447,205. Others, including gunsmith Wayne Novak, have also developed sights which are also intended to provide rugged service. Such sights are often fitted in a transverse dovetailed notch formed in the rear of a pistol's slide and having standardized dimensions known in the industry as the “Novak notch” dimensions. By transverse is meant in a direction at a right angle to the pistol bore and lying in a horizontal plane when the pistol is held in a standard grip with the bore centerline in a horizontal plane. Generally, the standardized dimensions for the notch are selected so that the notch will accept a dovetail-like projection that is 12.5 millimeters in fore-aft length on a planar bottom surface and having sidewalls that taper inwardly at 70 degrees from horizontal on front and back wall surfaces. The bottom planar surface of the projection is preferably 3 mm in vertical height from the upper surface of the notch opening, within customary gunsmithing tolerances.
While the combat sights of the prior art do provide a somewhat smooth and snag-free draw, a clear sight picture and rugged service, they do not provide the adjustability many have come to enjoy when using target pistols equipped with adjustable target sights. Pistol sights are often used in a variety of situations. A sight is customarily optically aligned along the axis of the bore and is used to align the bore of the firearm with the target. Target sights are usually adjustable in the left and right direction for windage and in the up and down direction for elevation. A shooter will typically mount a sight to a firearm and will then immediately zero or sight-in the sight by a procedure of adjusting windage and elevation settings so that the sight's point of aim corresponds with the point of impact for a selected target at a desired range.
If a sight is mounted to a large caliber firearm, which is generating large recoil forces, or if the sight is subjected to rough handling, the zero or sighted-in position of the sight may change and the sight must then be adjusted for proper zero again. Traditional combat carry sights, as described above, are usually not adjustable for elevation, and so shooters have turned to permanently altering the front sight post by filing it down, to thereby raise the point of impact, or by substituting taller front sight blades, to lower the point of impact. Adjustments for windage have previously often required the shooter to strike the side of the sight with a pin punch and hammer, to thereby force the sight laterally in the notch, a clumsy and inherently inaccurate procedure that is clearly not well suited to making fine adjustments.
It will be readily apparent that a need exists for a rugged, durable, snag-free pistol rear sight that is adjustable for windage and for elevation and which overcomes the limitation of the prior art. The adjustable rear pistol sight in accordance with the present invention provides such a sight and is a substantial advance over the prior art.